1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector provided with a lock mechanism that retains a signal transmission medium inserted into an insulating housing and provided with an unlock mechanism thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, in various electrical devices, etc., various electrical connectors are widely used as means for electrically connecting various signal transmission media such as flexible printed circuits (FPC) and flexible flat cables (FFC). For example, in an electrical connector mounted and used on a printed wiring board like Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-231069 described below, a signal transmission medium consisting of, for example, a FPC or FFC is inserted to the interior thereof from a front-end-side opening of an insulating housing (insulator), and an actuator (connection operating means) is then turned by operating force of an operator so as to be pushed down toward a connection action position in a connector front side or rear side. As a result, part of a lock member drops in an engagement part provided at a terminal part of the signal transmission medium to achieve an engaged state, and the terminal part of the signal transmission medium is configured to be retained in an approximately immobile state by the lock member.
In this manner, the electrical connector provided with the actuator is configured to operate engagement/detachment of the lock member by subjecting the actuator to a turning operation between a connection cancel position and a connection action position; wherein, operation efficiency may be problematic since the actuator has to be operated separately from the operation of inserting the signal transmission medium (for example, FPC, FFC). Therefore, conventionally, an electrical connector provided with a so-called one-action auto-lock mechanism is sometimes employed, wherein the mechanism is configured so that part of the lock member is elastically displaced so as to be placed over the signal transmission medium inserted in the insulating housing and that part of the lock member then drops in an engagement part of the signal transmission medium to carry out engagement. When an electrical connector provided with such a one-action auto-lock mechanism is used, the signal transmission medium can be retained in an approximately immobile state only by inserting the signal transmission medium to a predetermined position in the electrical connector, wherein operation efficiency is improved.
However, although the one-action auto-lock mechanism employed in conventional electrical connectors has an advantage that locking and retention is carried out only by inserting the signal transmission medium (for example, FPC, FFC) into the electrical connector as described above, when an unlock operation for removing the signal transmission medium from the insulating housing is to be carried out, while carrying out the unlock operation with one hand, an operation of removing the signal transmission medium with the other hand in parallel with the unlock operation has to be carried out. The unlock operation takes labor, and the operation of removing the signal transmission medium cannot be efficiently carried out in some cases.
We disclose the prior art that we are aware of to be materials for the examination of the application as follows.
[Unexamined Publication Gazette 1] JP 2009-231069 A
[Unexamined Publication Gazette 2] JP 2011-108500 A
[Unexamined Publication Gazette 3] JP 2011-108501 A